Shirley Temple, Former Hollywood Child Star, Dies at 85

The Depression Era starlet who rocketed to fame at the age of 6 has died of natural causes in her home near San Francisco

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Shirley Temple, the actress forever imagined as a dimpled, curly-haired movie star, died Monday evening at the age of 85, according to her publicist. She died in her Woodside, Calif., home surrounded by family members and caregivers, the Associated Press reports.

Born in 1928, Temple rose to fame as a child star in the Depression Era thanks to her star singing and tap dancing in the 1934 hits Stand Up and Cheer and Bright Eyes. But her early rise meant early retirement, too, and she stopped making films in 1950 at the age of 21. In later years she became a political activist, launching a failed bid for Congress on the Republican ticket in 1967. Later she held numerous diplomatic posts, serving as U.S. ambassador abroad, most famously to Czechoslovakia during the fall of communism.

A statement released by her family read, “We salute her for a life of remarkable achievements as an actor, as a diplomat, and most importantly as our beloved mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.”

Leader claims that a name-change is needed to make foreigners more aware of the country’s potential

President Nursultan Nazarbayev cited country’s oil wealth as a reason why it should be seen as distinctive from the rest of the Central Asian”‘stans,” Reuters reports. Those include Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, countries that are largely poverty-stricken.

Kazakhstan has seen a large level of investment from foreign corporations since it emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union more than two decades ago, but Kazakh officials say the country still gets little attention from the rest of the world. Nazarbayev said that the country of 17 million could be renamed ‘Kazakh Ali,’ meaning “the Land of the Kazakhs,” as a way to seem more appealing to potential foreign visitors.

“Foreigners show interest in Mongolia, whose population is just two million people, but whose name lacks the ‘stan’ ending,” the president’s press service quoted him as saying. Nazarbayev said the idea is something “we definitely need to discuss with the people.”

Castaway is Back in the Hospital

A man who said he was lost at sea for 13 months sees his health worsen

A man who said he was lost at sea for more than a year has been hospitalized, with doctors saying his limbs have started to swell up and that he’s too dehydrated to travel.

Jose Salvador Alvarenga’s worsening health and his hospitalization in the Marshall Islands will delay his planned Friday return to El Salvador, CNN reports. “Doctors say he’s severely dehydrated and low on vitamins and minerals,” said a trade official in Mexico, where Alvarenga had been living.

Alvarenga set out with a friend from the port of Paredon Viejo in Mexico in December 2012 on a trip to catch sharks. But their boat was blown off course by a storm and they eventually lost use of the engines. Alvarenga said he survived by living off raw fish, birds and turtles. His companion, 23-year-old Ezequiel Cordova, died of starvation after four weeks. Alvarenga made it to the shores of the Marshall Islands last week.